September 18, 2014

CERN and the American Physical Society Announce Partnership for Open Access

Partnership to make all CERN-authored articles published in the APS journal collection to be open access

College Park, MD – The American Physical Society (APS) and The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) jointly announce a partnership to make all CERN-authored articles published in the APS journal collection to be Open Access. Articles in APS' Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, and Physical Review C in 2015 and 2016 will be covered by this agreement. All physics results from CERN will benefit from this partnership, in theoretical physics and experimental physics, at the LHC accelerator as well as other experimental programs.

"CERN is a long-time supporter of APS journals, and is committed to Open Access. This collaboration is a very important step towards global Open Access for a global discipline." said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer.

Although APS is not participating in the current cycle of SCOAP3, the global Open Access initiative in physics coordinated by CERN, this agreement demonstrates both organizations' commitment to Open Access publishing.

"It was important to continue our discussions with CERN, while keeping in mind the financial stability of the APS publishing program," said Mac Beasley, 2014 APS President. "This is a fitting solution that advances physics."

Thanks to this partnership, articles will be available free of charge for everyone to read. Copyright will remain with the authors and permissive Creative Commons CC-BY licenses will allow re-use of the information (e.g. in books, review articles, conference proceedings and teaching material) as well as text- and data-mining applications.

CERN and APS have been cooperating for a long time to support APS's pioneering Open Access journal Physical Review Special Topics Accelerators and Beams that publishes articles on topics of technical innovation at CERN and elsewhere. APS and CERN are committed to continue to work together to find new ways to collaborate to provide for the widest dissemination of physics results through global Open Access initiatives.